phlip wrote:So, I'm thinking I'll do things a little different this set, and actually get a Standard deck ready at the start of the format, rather than several months in... Trying to build a green splash-white aggroish facepunchy deck... mainly because I want to build around a God, and I think Nylea will be the easiest to encreature, what with Kalonian Tusker, and green's general happiness with putting a billion creatures on the board.

So... this is what I have so far. I've got to make some cuts, though, and I've probably forgotten some obvious invaluable card... I'm no good at constructed deckbuilding...

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Rancor won't be in Standard with Theros, it was most recently printed in M13.

I know, I'm sad too. I'm not sure I even remember how to play green without Rancor.

Also, as long as you're looking for cards to cut, I don't think Dryad Militant really adds much to your overall plan

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

Ralith The Third wrote:Actually I need to wait until friday when I can pick up the box I'm splitting with a friend, and *then* dig through my decks to figure out what cards I want to get to flesh it out.

Complaining about spending money and then buying packs is shooting yourself in the foot. The most expensive way to play magic is to open packs. The cheapest is to purposely pick singles that are cheap and buy only them.

Title: It was given by the XKCD moderators to me because they didn't care what I thought (I made some rantings, etc). I care what YOU think, the joke is forums.xkcd doesn't care what I think.

I'd take out Garruks, Nyleas, Elvish Mystics, and Witch Stalkers and put in more aggressive creatures. Smiters, the new watchwolf printed in theros, call of the conclave, Boon Satyr, and Selesnya Charm are all additions to consider.

On the other hand, if you want to be more midrange, I'd take out things like Experiment One and Kalonian Tusker. I haven't seen Kalonian Hydra used to great effect yet, but he definitely seems like he could be broken.

Edit: Oh, and Spear of Helios. Awesome.

Zamfir wrote:Yeah, that's a good point. Everyone is all about presumption of innocence in rape threads. But when Mexican drug lords build APCs to carry their henchmen around, we immediately jump to criminal conclusions without hard evidence.

I played a Theros sealed 2hg pre release tournament with a friend and all I can say is wow. This limited format is intense. I had a blast and can't wait to play more.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. -Kurt Vonnegut

Ralith The Third wrote:Actually I need to wait until friday when I can pick up the box I'm splitting with a friend, and *then* dig through my decks to figure out what cards I want to get to flesh it out.

Complaining about spending money and then buying packs is shooting yourself in the foot. The most expensive way to play magic is to open packs. The cheapest is to purposely pick singles that are cheap and buy only them.

I'm shifting to singles after I get these, except for draft tourneys (20 bucks for 6 packs and a stack of semirandoms, then hella fun? Worth it) and packs I win (such as through those tourneys)

I'm not seriously complaining about the money, anyways. I rarely make purchases I really regret anymore, unless something else unrelated comes up (My car crashed. Shit. Now I regret buying that new paint job last tuesday...)

I also feel like packs gave me some good directions to go in. It'd be a bit overwhelming for me to build a deck straight out of the gate with nothing but singles, knowing what I knew when I started. I think I'd still have problems now, and I don't want to build a deck that someone else built, unless it's convergent. Even if this gimps me in terms of top-end play, I enjoy it more, and that's what matters to me.

Yeah, busting packs isn't cheap, but it is a lotta fun. If your local shop does box discounts, keep that in mind as well. It should be a significant savings(for instance, I sell boxes for $110, and if bought by the pack, the same box would cost $144). If you don't want a full box, find a buddy or two you can split it with, and you're all better off.

Alternatively, common/uncommon playsets aren't usually too expensive. A playset of commons should be maybe $15 max for a recent set, so that's not bad. Gives you the foundation for a lot of decks. The money's mostly in the rares and mythics. Now, a competitive standard deck can be quite expensive, but you can usually get away without using the money rares heavily for casual play.

I've been fighting it for a while now that there are two Modern events per week and an EDH league I can play in, but I went to play in a Theros draft earlier today and instead got roped into a Standard win-a-box tournament.

Since I haven't been playing standard recently I didn't actually have a deck built, but I whipped up a pretty slick G/B deck out of pieces of my old Predator Ooze deck and some other stuff I had to hand.

I'm surprised G/B isn't getting more love in standard so far, I know the format is only a few days old, but it seems like everyone's talking about UW/x and Big Red/Big Boros. At SCG Worcester this weekend that covers pretty much all the top decks with some Gruul/Naya thrown in.

With Deathrite Shaman, Scavenging Ooze, Abrupt Decay and Thoughtseize all in standard right now you can practically play a Modern 'The Rock' deck, I've even seen some top modern G/B decks running Desecration Demon and Varolz.

For myself, I don't have any Thoughtseizes and only 2 Scavenging Oozes so far but I threw some Duress in there and playsets of Varolz, Loltleth Troll and Dreg Mangler. I also had a Reaper of the Wilds I wanted to try out and some Read the Bones. Left with a bit of a hole (after also including aforementioned DRS, Abrupt Decay and Desecration Demon, along with Doom Blade and Putrefy to round out the removal suite) that didn't quite make 60 cards so I tossed some Vraskas and Lifebane Zombies in there.

I was extremely happy with the Read the Bones. I was a fan of Sign in Blood for sure, but even for one more mana and losing the 'shock your opponents last 2 life' mode RtB blows Sign out of the water. The ability to dig up to 4 cards is a tremendous upgrade over the other 'draw 2' sorceries.

I expected this a bit from my pre-release and drafting experiences with the card, but even in a janky 'thrown together at the last minute' constructed deck the much higher quality and consistency of cards you can access with RtB really pushes it over the top, I'm tempted to start calling it 'the black Sphinx's Revelation'. On at least two occasions during the night I RtBed myself to 2 life against a lethal board and won where Sign or Divination would have meant a loss.

I was also happy maindecking the Lifebane Zombies. I expected them to be fragile, but with so little black in the format right now they're de-facto unblockable. For some reason, they also never got targetted for removal if I had any other creature on the board (For the record, killing a Dreg Mangler when you're opponent also has a creature you can't actually block on the board is not a winning play) My theory is that everyone is just so relieved that it isn't a Nighthawk they just forget it's actually a pretty brisk clock. I'm already planning a more refined version of this deck that will probably run two Lifebane's mainboard just to see if the pattern holds.

Lotleth Troll and Dreg Mangler were, as expected, rocks in this deck. Lotleth Troll was especially nice as no one else is running Putrefy apparently and though it rarely came up, the Troll represents some nice synergy with Varolz.

Although I brewed quite a bit with Varolz in anticipation of rotation, before there started to be actual modern events locally and I stopped playing standard, this was the first time I actually played with my Varolzes in constructed.They actually didn't play at all like I expected them to. I expected something like a Predator Ooze replacement, a hard to remove creature that just kept getting bigger. But what I got was more like a utility creature that improved all the other creatures in play. I don't think I ever scavenged onto Varolz itself, but instead used the Scavenge it granted my creatures to boost Lotleth Troll and Lifebane Zombie. It ended up working out quite well, but with four in the deck I drew uneeded multiples a little too often. Three is probably the right number for this deck, but there was also never really a time when Varolz was just the card I needed or wanted to draw, so maybe two is better.

Reaper of the Wilds ended up being a bit disappointing, especially compared to the other 4 drops I could have been running, like Desecration Demon or Corpsejack Menace. Although, with only one in the deck I didn't get a lot of opportunities to see the Reaper reap, so I'll probably play with it a bit more and withhold ultimate judgement.

The rest of the cards performed pretty much exactly as advertised, gonna make some refinements and probably play it again tomorrow. I'm considering adding Encroaching Wastes, maybe just in the sideboard, to punish any greedy 3-color decks and maybe just a little bit to try and be more like Modern Rock.

Anyway, quick tournamnet report:

Match one was against U/B control, much as might have been played pre-Theros but with Divination instead of Think Twice and no Drownyard. No Ashiok either which I though was interesting, been hearing lots of different opinions on that one so I was interested in playing opposite the Nightmare Weaver, but it didn't happen.I won game 1 with a flood of Manglers against some ridiculous number of Aetherizes, and sided into my soopur-seekrit anti-esper tech with Skylashers. Somewhere around turn three-four I duressed with a Skylasher and Dreg Mangler on board and saw three Dimir Charms (!). My opponent scooped when I pointed out the Charm couldn't actually hit either of my creatures.

Match 2 I played against an incredibly greedy Jund deck with Kalonian Hydra, Corpsejack Menace and Gyre Sage. I cleverly blanked doom-blade by playing only black creatures while Abrupt Decaying mana dorks and putrefying or Doom Bladeing anything big that happened to resolve. Lifebane Zombie was key in this matchup and Varolz really shined by scavenging stuff onto the zombie which could only be blocked by the Menace which therefore painted a huge target on the Corpsejack for my Putrefies. I won 2-1, losing game 2 by mulling to 4.

match three I went up against a deck apparently called 'Selesnya Little Kid Aggro', featuring Fleecemane Lion, Loxodon Smiter and Advent of the Wurm. It happened to be piloted by one of the better local players and put on a lot of pressure fast, and kept it on. I almost managed to stabilize in game 1, but lost to a second Advent of the Wurm. And then lost game 2 without ever putting up much of a fight.

Match 4 I went up against an interesting Boros Heroic deck. Unfortunately for the Heroes though, they all died to any of my removal spells and the deck just couldn't effectively put any pressure on. The deck put on a better showing in Game two, but I Read the Bones myself to 2 and right into a Desecration demon that won me the game.

After that, the tournament cut to top four, which was 3-1 and up, so I made the cut with a deck I built in about five minutes immediately before the first match. Instead of playing it out we all decided to split the box 4 ways. I would have been significantly more motivated to play at least the first round though if 'Little Kid Aggro' hadn't also made the cut.

I can't even describe how nice it was to play a whole standard tournament, and one that's typically highly competitive at that, and not see a single Restoration Angel, Thragtusk or Huntmaster of the Fells. I even managed to avoid Azorius Charm, though I know they're still lurking out there in the standard meta and I only managed to avoid them by chance.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

The commons in this set are crazy powerful, it's part of what makes this draft format so much fun.

so, the falout from SCG Worcester is already pretty clear, Ashiok is pegging $25+, Jace Architect is $30+ and Elsppeth is on her way to $50 probably. I was watching the coverage during the WaB and Ashiok didn't seem to do anything worthwhile (though I do think Esper was probably the stronger of the two control decks). Jace didn't learn any new tricks, but put up a strong showing against all the aggro in the format where his +1 is a little more than just the cost of playing his -2 multiple times.

Elspeth at least seemed worthy of a price increase. A lot of people were skeptical of her high CMC, but this event really showed even in an Aggro heavy environment she can clog up the board and take over the game.

Though in the end, neither deck could beat Mono-red, which is basically the benchmark of new formats, so it's kind of interesting to see all this love for 'walkers from 'also ran' decks. Ah well, planeswalker prices are always irrational this soon after set release. I'm just bitter I didn't forsee these shenanigans at the release and traded my Ashiok for one Scavenging Ooze instead of holding out for 2.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

I was digging through a closet last night and found a couple old decks with 4x Bayou and 4x Tropical Island inside. Sometime in the next couple weeks I'll be hitting up the local game store to trade them in. Any ideas what sort of price I should be trying to get for trade ins? I'm seeing them listed for $90-100 on websites, but I don't know how that translates to trade in value, and I'd rather not get ripped off.

Trade-in value depends a lot on the local gamestore. Anywhere from 25% to 75% of sell price is typical. My advice is check out the online buylists like Starcity and Card Kingdom to guage a fair trade-in price. If the local stores offer particularly bad trade-in value, online buylists can be a good alternative.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

Oh, geez, Ashiok is jumping? I won Xenagos in a draft at FNM, and a friend really wanted it, to the point of offering two Ashioks for it... a trade that was already heavily in my favour, but now even one Ashiok is worth more than Xenagos...

It won't last. Ashiok is currently over-valued because it had some showings in the first event of the new format.Next week, we'll probably see a lot of decks built as a reaction to this week's showing and Ashiok will probably drop to something more reasonable. After that we'll get the PT to settle things down.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

Nork wrote:I was digging through a closet last night and found a couple old decks with 4x Bayou and 4x Tropical Island inside. Sometime in the next couple weeks I'll be hitting up the local game store to trade them in. Any ideas what sort of price I should be trying to get for trade ins? I'm seeing them listed for $90-100 on websites, but I don't know how that translates to trade in value, and I'd rather not get ripped off.

They're very sought after cards and easy to sell on ebay. Take some GOOD pictures front and back and put them in listings (bayous in one, tropical islands in the other) with a $200 starting bid for each quartet and no reserve. You'll not get ripped off and I am sure you'll get bids unless they're beat to hell. Very little work on your part. Might make a couple hundred bucks cutting out the middle man. Probably net you $800 total.

UG and GB, too bad you didn't have the UB in there. Underground Seas are a pretty penny.

Title: It was given by the XKCD moderators to me because they didn't care what I thought (I made some rantings, etc). I care what YOU think, the joke is forums.xkcd doesn't care what I think.

I would list them individually personally. A lot of people don't collect duals in lots and you end up eliminating a lot of your market for what is probably a minimal gain.

In Theros news: I'm glad control w/o many permanents is a thing now. I realize it's basically just RtR block constructed, but I like older control shells so I'm glad the days of thragtusk/angel of serenity control are done.

Zamfir wrote:Yeah, that's a good point. Everyone is all about presumption of innocence in rape threads. But when Mexican drug lords build APCs to carry their henchmen around, we immediately jump to criminal conclusions without hard evidence.

Yea, I've played my GB aggro list against a couple of UW/x control decks since rotation now and they're all much more interactive and interesting games than pre-rotation matches against UW/Thragtusk control

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

Even in super slow formats, you can goldfish a turn 4 win easily. The problem is the consistency of your deck and the consistency of the opposition. There's only one viable sweeper currently but we also got rid of a lot of good red and white cheap cards, so it's currently a format at both ends of the spectrum, with mid range being mostly unplayable.

Zamfir wrote:Yeah, that's a good point. Everyone is all about presumption of innocence in rape threads. But when Mexican drug lords build APCs to carry their henchmen around, we immediately jump to criminal conclusions without hard evidence.

I'm playing Boros Aggro that has a fatter top end than most aggro (common thought is that I'm super greedy) I've got more good cheap cards than I know what to do with. The worst loss IMO is Champion of the Parish followed by Silverblade Paladin (if we're talking about low cmc stuff), even so we have a lot of good new stuff, and have kept a lot of good stuff.

Soldier of the Pantheon is good against everything, either to punch through early damage against UWx control, as Azorius Charm can't touch him, or to eat removal that would kill my more important threats.

Akroan Hoplite is almost always good, especially if one is also running Ash Zealot, which I am. Along with Ash Zealot and the Hoplite, I'm running Wojek Halberdiers, who kills everything in it's CMC range, and has a lot of bang for it's buck. And with Elspeth and/or Assemble the Legion the Hoplite kills things well out of his weight class.

I also run a pair of Anax and Cymede, who are good alone, but triggering heroic (with Boros charm only as everything else is removal) has won me games.

Running all of these Red and RW creatures means that Legion's Initiative is much better than it usually is, as it's an anthem for every one of my creatures with the exception of Ash Zealot (who has first strike, so the extra power might as well be extra toughness) and Soldier of the Pantheon, who benefits a bit from having a bigger bottom.

So, SCG Cleveland results are in. No blue deck of any kind in the top 8, though a UW and an Esper deck manage sot barely sneak into the top 16. Lots of GW and Naya filling up the top slots, making GW/x the 'deck to beat' going into pro Tour Theros.

BW/x midrange also made a strong showing, with BW, Junk and an oddball BRW deck all making it into the top 8. all three ran some combination of Obzedats, WHips of Erebos and Sin Collectors between the board and main (along with the typical black removal suite and Thoughtseize), BW shared some Elspeths with Junk (so look for her to keep steady at whatever ridiculous price she currently demands, or perhaps even go up some more.) while sharing Blood Barons with BWR

I've come to a conclusion on Reaper of the Wilds. She's not all that against Aggro, but is very strong against slower control style decks. Unless the meta comes down heavy on the side of Blue control decks, Reaper is a solid sideboard but Desecration Demon is stronger in more matchups. Honestly, Desecration Demon is also probably at least strong enough that you don't want to side them out against control either, so Reaper may sub for Varolz or Dreg Mangler (actually, pull out two of each for a playset of Reapers)

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

Well, both "blue" and "black" start with B, so they can't both be B. We can arbitrarily assign one as B and use a different letter for the other. First guess is to use the second letter of the word instead... but that's L for both of them, so saying B for one and L for the other wouldn't, in and of itself, indicate to a new observer which was which. So move on to the third letter, which is U for blue. And this became the convention.

Printing does it the other way around - uses B for blue, and K for black... but the people at Wizards didn't know this at first, and by the time they became aware of it, the WUBRG letters were too heavily engrained to change.

K makes a bit more sense to me... and I understand the reasoning either way. It's just... new. Most of my discussion of MTG have been with people I know who started with me or with people in the gameshop where FNM is in my area... in my texts with my friends (uncommon to start with) R/B means Red Blue because I don't have a Red Black. B/G means Black Green because I don't have a blue green.

I've taken my RW aggro deck and shoved in more lands and three more high cmc win conditions (Assemble and Elspeth to go along with my 2 Aurelia). I've been accused of being super greedy, but it seems to be working. I've also been trying to force Firemane Avenger to work, as I've got the promo ones that are super pretty. They win when they activate, and suck when they don't.

I have mixed results against RDW, if I play well I can ride Soldier of the Pantheon to victory against UWx control (Boros Charm and Legion's Initiative gives me 7 counters to various forms of mass removal). Mono green is scary until after board unless I draw very well, GR scares me, but again Helix and the Mortars in board make it less awful. I have yet to play against whip after fattening my top end, but it beat me pretty soundly before.

I will say that with so many of my creatures being WR Legion's Initiative is fantastic. It's essentially an anthem for every one of my creatures with the exception of Soldier of the Pantheon and Ash Zealot (who has first strike, so the smaller butt doesn't matter) but protecting against weird wipes, or giving a creature/creatures haste, or giving Aurelia a third attack phase is very handy. I've used all three to steal victory from the jaws of defeat.

So, I tried my new deck out last night, and it didn't go too well. I've managed to pick up four Bident of Thassa, so decided to build round those. I made a blue / green deck, but it turned out too slow. I'd planned on doing a lot of attacking in the air and trying to draw into a Benthic Giant, which I'd then pump up, but I was getting killed before that happened. On the bright side, Horizon Chimera was really useful, and I did learn that not many people seem to be running anti-flier defence, so that could be the way to go. I'm going to rebuild it, go for a more low-cost aggro feel but trying to keep a high proportion of fliers, and see what happens next weekend.

Please note that despite the lovely avatar Sungura gave me, I am not a medical doctor.

Playing my GB aggro/midrange deck against a GW 'little kid' aggro deck in game 3. With a Whip of Erebos on my side and a Trostani on the other, the game went to turns with both of us at 50+ life with ridiculously crowded boards. By turn 3 I've blown up their tokens and got them down to around 20 life. They pass to turn 5 figuring they've got the draw so they don't tap down both Demons when I go to combat. I swing all out and after blocks I'm just a few points short of lethal, so I pitch three Dreg Manglers to my Lotleth Trolls and eat them with my Scavenging Ooze for the last minute win.

I really miss rancor in this format...

I'm working on a new EDH deck, gonna use Damia, Sage of Stone and have Gorgon and +1/+1 counter subthemes. The main theme will still be hilarious shenanigans though, I look forward to casting a kicked Rite of Replication on creatures like Master Biomancer or Biovisionary.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

I'm not sure I get it. apparently a bunch of Pro's had a secret meeting where the decided to pretend like Supreme Verdict, and removal in general, doesn't exist so they could play this silly Mono-Blue/Master of Waves deck that plays cards like Nightveil Specter and Judge's Familiar against cards like Desecration Demon and Boros Reckoner.

The Black devotion deck is actually quite interesting, scry lands in particular for the mono-colored deck (likely to make up for the lack of Read the Bones) Also, Pack Rats which generate tokens that also add to devotion, and potentially fuel the Whip. Also, lots of removal to deal with the other devotion decks

Also interesting to note that the Red 'devotion' deck doesn't actually run Fanatic of Mogis but is basically just a Mono-red aggro deck with Nykthos for casting fast Dragons.

The other decks are fairly conventional and well established.

edit:No copies of Ashiok in the top 8, the one Esper deck seems (as should be expected at an event like this) really well tuned. the only shaky card choice to me is Divination in a deck that should have access to Read the Bones. Then again, Control doesn't exactly want to be eating life against all the fast aggro decks in the format.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

Probably because no matter what happens with Fanatic of Mogis, if you can summon him, you can win the game without the damage, or you'll lose it regardless of the damage. Great card on paper, terrible in practice. (Or such is my opinion, at least, echoed by non-pros at my local FNM)